Clare Pollard

Poet, Playwright, Non-fiction writer

University of Essex

Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978. Her first collection of poetry The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) was written while she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory award. Her fourth collection Changeling (Bloodaxe, 2011) is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Clare’s first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, and has since been performed at the Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich. In 2012 she co-wrote the radio play Surface to Air with W.N. Herbert for BBC Radio 4.

Clare supports herself by working as a journalist, editor, teacher and translator. She has written and presented two documentaries for television and one for radio My Male Muse (2007), which was a BBC Radio 4 pick of the year. She has been managing editor of the Idler, has edited issues of Magma poetry magazine, and co-edited an anthology with James Byrne entitled Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century.

Clare teaches regularly for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and the City Literary Institute. Her interest in the process of translation has led to her involvement in numerous translation projects, including co-translating Poems by Caasha Lul Mohamud Yusuf (Poetry Translation Centre, 2012) and writing a new version of Ovid’s Heroines (Bloodaxe, 2013). Clare lives in south London with her husband and son, and blogs regularly about her life as a poet.